As created beings, the children of human parents and our Heavenly Father, we each have a strong desire to be independent and also to reside within relationship. How are we unique? To what extent do we reflect our makers? During childhood this questioning is rooted in curiosity and wonder. We stockpile answers like limited-edition collectibles. In adulthood, we realize that these cherished factoids do not necessarily equal a windfall. Rather, they serve as an incomplete roadmap to understanding our identity. Troubling questions abound. Are the sins of the father truly revisited upon the children? How is one to make sense of the fierce parental love that has power to create deep wounds and to heal? Answers are not easy to come by. More often than not, we are left to our own devices to imperfectly piece together meaning from the entanglement of biography and subjective experience.
Charlotte Wells’s Aftersun captures the inherent tension of being an image-bearer in a broken world. Via the framing device of an adult daughter watching home videos of her last childhood vacation with her father, the plot concerns eleven-year-old Sophie (played by brilliant newcomer Frankie Corio) and her thirty-one-year-old father, Calum (a mesmerizing Paul Mescal) exploring the sights around their low-budget resort on the Turkish coast. It has all the trappings of an idyllic holiday. Sophie and Calum enjoy long days of sunbathing, swimming, and playing pool. The dynamic between them is so easy that teenaged vacationers mistake Calum for Sophie’s elder brother. However, there are signs that not all is well with Calum. Heavy sighs escape his body. He struggles to sleep at night. He tells a stranger “I can’t see myself at age forty.” While Calum treats Sophie with deliberate gentleness, he is careless with himself. Wells’s camera captures Calum casually walking in front of a bus and narrowly missing being struck. He drinks too much. Upon completing brushing his teeth, he spits violently at his own reflection in the bathroom mirror. Sophie notices her father’s long silences but accepts his explanation that he is just “a little tired.” Audiences know better.
Wells’ feature-length debut masterfully walks a tightrope between a meditative exercise – a new mother revisiting the past in a bid to make sense of her present – and a coming-of-age drama in which the bittersweet transition between childhood and adolescence is well underway. Through hand-held camera footage shot by the actors and the strategic use of reflective surfaces (mirrors, glass, pools of water, television screens), audiences are invited to explore with Sophie the disquiet of making peace with our parents’ pain. Religious viewers especially should not look away from this heartbreak, but rather see in it an invitation to engage more meaningfully with the consolation offered by 1 Corinthians Chapter 13.
The Apostle Paul’s definition of love is evident in Calum and Sophie’s relationship. Their love is patient. Calum doesn’t get riled up by Sophie’s increasing assertions of independence and Sophie humors her dad’s awkward attempts to connect with her. Their love is protective. Calum tenderly applies sunscreen to Sophie’s face and instructs her in self-defense. Sophie covers her father’s nakedness when she enters the hotel room and discovers him passed out drunk. They trust one another even if they don’t fully understand the reality of the other person. They persevere. Calum struggles to push back the depression that threatens to overtake him so that they can make positive memories together. Sophie doesn’t give up trying to find common ground with her father despite the chasm of mental illness between them.
By the end of the film, adult Sophie is well past the childish reasoning that led her to smooth over the disconcerting aspects of her father’s behavior. The hopefulness of her recorded statement, “He’ll be fine. I’m sure,” rings hollow in a future where he is no longer present. Echoing Paul, Sophie is limited to knowing in part, as she can only see her father as a reflection in home videos. One day she will fully understand and be understood in turn. Until then, faith, hope, and love remain in the complicated recorded remembrances of her father. For Sophie, for each one of us, the greatest of these is love. Aftersun is a gift because it unflinchingly shows us the truth of that statement. — Prisca Bird (2026)
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